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Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Thanksgiving Table

Thanksgiving is just around the corner - actually, tomorrow - but Zach and I were able to celebrate our Thanksgiving dinner with friends this past Wednesday night.

We had a guest list of 18 and for a 'family' dinner, I felt certain we should all sit together at one table. You see, at previous dinners, we're divided between the table in the kitchen, the dining room, and people sitting throughout the living room and anywhere else a seat is available. But this dinner was different. It's Thanksgiving.

However, knowing how our house normally looks, there was just no way we could get 18 people around our dining room table.

Take a look at how we normally look with our fall decorations up...

As you can see, there is no way to fit 18 friends around that table. Here's one picture of our living room, as is, for maximum impact of the coming change!

From my perspective, a little swith-a-roo was needed! My plan... switch the living room and the dining room, pull chairs from all around the house (and even snag a few from my mother-in-law... thanks!) and add two extra tables to each end of our dining room table.

And guess what? It worked!

So, do you remember where our couch was sitting along the long wall in the living room? It moved and the buffet replaced it! Here's the couch sitting along the wall in the dining room under all those frames.

And the over-stuffed chair sitting where the buffet normally sits.

My favorite part of the switch was the long table that took over our living room. I loved it.

You can see now how we moved the gate-leg table to the corner (for drinks) and the buffet took the place of the couch (for food). Zach made sure I knew that he could not sit on the buffet to watch TV. Thanks goodness we have more than one TV in our house.

Everyone had a place setting - but they did not match. Some people had beautiful ratan chargers and others had gold. Some people had burnt orangeish-red napkins and others had wheat colored ones. And the plates were different too... we mixed in old china with new(er) china. And as you can clearly see, the different types of chairs were mixed around the table. I loved the fact that everything didn't match.

You were introduced to my 'Thankful Tree' in a past post (found here) that served as the centerpiece of the table. The fabric runner that spread the length of the three tables, well, some of it was left over fabric from a chair I reupholstered, and the middle piece of fabric, is a scarf I wear in the Fall! I found the brown pumpkins at Target in the $1 section and the bulbed garland of pumpkins and berries came from Hobby Lobby during their 80% off Fall decor sale. If you're catching what I'm throwing out... this was all very affordable!

As you can see in the pictures above, everyone had a pine cone at their place setting with their place card!

I used the same Martha Stewart place card template, as I mentioned here.

I used the same template for place cards for the food and drinks - just made them slightly bigger.

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And here's a picture of the table all lit up.

And the best picture of the night... our friends!

The food was incredible but the company was even better! I am so thankful for having a home to host friends in and the friends to fill it. Zach and I are incredibly blessed.